Trivia I find Ignored

Teachers…Where is the Respect?

I remember that in 4th grade…or was it 5th? I don’t really remember it that clearly. Anyway around that period I remember that I was home, doing my homework, listening to my sister and mother gossip about stuff I didn’t understand at that time. I finished what I was writing and started packing my stuff, my mother, apparently not too confident in her son’s abilities told me to hand the assignment over so she could check for mistakes. After like 2 or 3 minutes she told that I had made a mistake, I took a look and the word she told me was spelled wrong was actually spelled wrong but with a smug grin on my face I brought out an assignment checked by my teacher earlier with the same word spelled the wrong way.

My mother, intrigued took a look at the page and said flatly,”Your teacher made a mistake.”

It was as if she had told me night was day. Disbelieving I told her,”That’s impossible! Teachers don’t make mistakes.”

My sister, mocking me, said,”Why? Are they not human?”

“They are teachers!! You know….the people who teach? They are not supposed to make mistakes.”

Both my sister and mother went hysterical after that little showdown. I did not believe them until after my teacher had confirmed she was wrong.

This continued on for two or three years I believed that incident was an exception and I believed in their knowledge unconditionally. After that…I guess…I just grew up!

Now, when I remember those times and compare it to the present, the difference I see is respect!

Back then I wouldn’t have dared call my teacher by her first name, even among friends. But now every other guy in college I talk, to talks about their teacher like they are the just filled with crap.

Some of you might disagree, but another difference I see is in the results. I recall that when I was in 3rd grade my percentage never fell below 85. But now the average result hardly crosses 75.

6 thoughts on “Teachers…Where is the Respect?”

I do remember until I hit grade 7 and got the worst teacher in the world. He would walk out of the middle of class to have smoke breaks in his car and drink like a fish. That’s when I realized they sometimes don’t have any of the answers 🙂

I remember in my second year in high school, I had the laziest PE teacher ever. Instead of letting us out to do sports or teach us sports, she would confine us inside the classroom and force us to write in our notebooks everything from our textbook, rather than discuss it with us. Who does that? Only the incompetents, I guess.

Great post. I’m a teacher (online) and I do make mistakes. I also acknowledge said mistakes and work on finding the right answers. I’m lucky my students are understanding.

PE periods, for me, were always like recess. I never did anything even if my teacher told me to, he wasn’t strict at all, although I wish he had been, I wouldn’t be so skinny if that had been the case. I suppose your PE teacher and me would get along pretty nicely.

Teacher huh? That’s great! One of the main reasons I made a blog for was to improve my English, maybe you could give me a few pointers some time. And teaching is my dream job, I don’t know which subject yet, but I am really enthusiastic about it.

There are some things that people, in general, do that make us respect them less. I had a teacher in 6th grade who would sell us make-up! She would tell us not to tell the other teachers about it. Oh well, maybe she needed the extra cash. But still, I didn’t think it was proper taking children’s allowances. Hehe

On the other hand, I’ve also had a professor back in college whom I idolize very much. The subject was international law. He was a very effective teacher. I was motivated! I wanted to be able to answer his questions. He gave us plenty of work though, and called everyone in class for recitation, which made us all fidgety and anxious.

I’m glad that you already know what you want to do. Let’s strive to be the teacher that students will look up to and respect. =)

Like your international law professor, My English professor inspires me, he is young, twenty four, his teaching method is like no other, he started teaching in my college just about two months ago and in that short period he has won the hearts of every single one of his students, every one else has been put to shade.